Category Archives: endless

Post navigation

It was the first time I participated in a Core Apps hackfest and I must say I am really glad with how it all went. I felt like there was a perfect balance of planning, working, and just hanging out together. If you want to know more about the planned items, check out this very complete post by Carlos Soriano.
I focused on GNOME Software, leveraging the chance of having Allan Day and Jakub Steiner (from the GNOME Design team) nearby to get some long due ideas implemented upstream. They were restless in helping the different projects!

Here are the things I got done and are already integrated upstream:

Installed badge

— The way to show an installed app was by displaying a label “Installed” with a blue background on top of the app tiles, sometimes even covering important parts of them; now we use GNOME Software’s shopping bag icon with a check-mark, and a simpler “Installed” label when appropriate:

Installed icons in the category view

Installed icons in the main view

Installed icons + labels in the search view

Categories grid

— The expander widget that reveals the secondary categories now remains visible when expanded, allowing to hide them back;
— Merged the Education and Science categories; they had so many apps in common that it just made sense to make them one:

— For some users it is important to quickly see how much apps are occupying so they can decide to eventually remove them; as indicated by Jakub, this should be a temporary measure while we do not have this information in the Usage app which is the right place to display that:

Apps’ sizes showing under the remove button

Until the next!

In the end I am happy with the outcome but there were two main features I didn’t have time to implement: categories redesign, and a license agreement dialog.
I must also say that it was very nice to work along with Kalev and we both missed Richard who unfortunately could not make it.Cosimo also came all the way from SF for the hackfest which was great because we could tackle some Endless OS related tasks that were more complex to discuss over the interwebs.

It was great meeting everyone and I am looking forward to participating in the next one!
Special thanks to Kinvolk for sharing their space, their snacks, and their help in organizing everything. Also to Collabora for sponsoring the nice dinner on Friday.

So our latest and greatest Endless OS is out with the new 3.0 version series!
The shiny new things include the use of Flatpak to manage the applications; a new app center (GNOME Software); a new icon set; a new Windows installer that gives you the possibility of installing Endless OS in dual-boot; and many bug fixes.

Apps, apps, apps!

Endless cake to celebrate the 3.0 release! A work of art and flavor made by Jonathan Blandford

One of the big changes is the replacement of our old (and in-house) App Store by GNOME Software — the GNOME app center. Most of my time the past months has been spent in adapting this project to our needs. GNOME Software is surely a complex beast but I have been getting the invaluable help of its maintainer — Richard Hughes — who I now owe many Weißbiere.
Last week I gave a talk at the first edition of the Libre Application Summit in Portland about the work we’re doing regarding the applications story in the Endless OS: the evolution of the applications in the OS, the motivation behind some decisions, the changes we did to GNOME Sofware, etc. A video and slides should be up on the internetz soon if you want to know about that in more detail.

Join the future

The changes in this new 3.0 version may not seem such a big deal on the surface but everybody had to work really hard to make it happen and they open a lot of possibilities for our users and developers. We’re betting big on Flatpak and we want to see it succeed as not only Endless would benefit from it but pretty much every user of a Linux desktop. So if you’re an app developer, check it out and talk to the community if you need some help. We’re also still hiring, in case you are looking for new challenges.

I’ve been spending the week in San Francisco where I’ve been going every day to the awesome Endless‘ office in SoMa.
It’s been really great to talk in person to all the people I usually have to ping on the internetz and experience a bit of the office life in San Francisco.

Next Monday I am speaking at the Libre Application Summit GNOME in Portland about how we’re managing and delivering the applications to our Endless OS’s users. I am also very curious to check out the city of Portland as everybody tells me good things about it.
If you’re attending the event, come say hi!

That’s right, tomorrow I will take the train down to Karlsruhe to attend GUADEC 2016 after a 3-year absence (time flies!).

I am looking forward to meeting old friends and attending some nice talks and BOF events. At Endless we have been very busy working on our next release of the Endless OS and some of my colleagues are giving very interesting talks related to our work so be sure to check them out! I have been working on the applications story which will be using Flatpak and GNOME Software so if you are interested in knowing more about that we can have a chat too.